Best Free Online Backup Sites

Introduction

Do you know when the absolute worst time to think about backups is? It’s the moment when the tech support guy tells you your hard drive has died and your data is lost.

One error that the free online backups will not help is recovery of a file a split second after you delete that important presentation or cherished photo. Most free services do not save deleted files but write over the old file.

The free online backup services will save your files off-site to the cloud. If your hard drive crashes your files are not lost. Your first line of defense should be an external hard drive to back up your hard drive or a jump drive for your documents.

An online backup provides 24/7 access to your files from any Internet connected computer, smartphone, or tablet style device. Data storage in the cloud is one of the quickest means to data archiving and recovery.

The requirements to judge the online backup are listed below:

Storage Size: More free storage is obviously better. Our photo files are larger and we are taking more photos. This requires more storage.

Document Synchronization: Documents and files created or changed need to automatically be uploaded to the “Cloud.”

Long Term Reliability of the Site: Will your files be there available a year from now, five years from now? This is subjective. If I have heard of the service before I became editor of this category or one of our readers makes a compelling argument, the site will be considered reliable.

Security: It should be assumed that security is minimal for the free sites. If the files you upload will not be encrypted, there's nothing to stop someone from looking at your files. This includes law enforcement officials who can serve papers from a judge requesting copies of your files. The services I have checked do not have encryption on the fly. Spideroak has pre-egress or pre-internet security. Your files are encrypted before they are uploaded.

File Location: Ideally the files should be able to be located anyplace on your hard drive. Instead many online backup services require a special folder to be created. All your files will have to be stored in that folder. Also, the files will have to be stored on the local drive and copied to the online service.

Ease of Use: The service should be menu driven and intuitive when selecting the files and folders to be backed up. These are two primary ways to do this:

The first way is the service creates a folder and all the files in the folder are backed up. OneDrive does it this way. It creates a OneDrive folder and everything in this folder is backed up.

The second way is you select folders or files inside the program. Using Spideroak, a tree of your files and folders is displayed and you select the files/folders to back-up by clicking a check box.

One possible strategy is to use several free sites. Use one site for photos, a second for general documents and a third site with pre-upload and post-download encryption for your financial documents and other documents you want to keep private.

Discussion

IDrive's parent company IBackup has been in business since 1999 and therefore meets the long term reliability requirement. The service has 5 GB of free storage. While not a lot by today's standard it is better than 2 GB. IDrive does provide pre file transfer encryption. You provide the private key which will be known only to you. This will secure your files from being read by others without your permission.

IDrive has both scheduled and continuous backup. The default is scheduled backup. IDrive also has versioning. In this way if you accidentally delete a file, it can be retrieved.

Your files can be stored in any place on your hard drive. This allows you to keep your current file structure. It will not be necessary to move your file to a special folder for backup.

I just noticed Google drive now has 15 GB of online storage. It is still not encrypted and you still have to put all your files in the Google Drive folder on your PC. Google is an established company 15 GB is a large amount of storage.

I have moved Google Drive to #2 because it has 15 GB of storage available. I have tested it and confirmed there are 15 GB..

Google drive has the follow good features.

First, it available storage is a large 15 GB.

Second is the stability of the provider. Google is going to be around for a long time and cloud storage is a key company service.

Third, it is easy to use. Just go to your Google account ( assuming you have one), and down load the software.

Finally you documents are automatically synchronized.

Google Drive has two negatives: no security and files locations.

Your file are not encrypted locally before being uploaded to the &quot;cloud&quot;. Do not store files that you do not want others are to be able to read. While it is not open to anyone on the Internet who doesn't have the password, law enforcement agencies can obtain copies of your files without your knowledge.

Another negative is your files have to be stored in the Google Drive folder. At first I thought this would be a problem, but after using the service there is not issue using the Google Drive folder for your files.

Microsoft has changed OneDrive. It is now 7 GB if you are a new subscriber to the service. If you are an old subscriber and had 25 GB of storage you get to keep your 25 GB.

I dropped OneDrive's ranking because of its reduced storage space, no encryption and the annoying OneDrive folder you have to use. It is built into Windows 8 and the service is expected to be around for a long time as it's provided by Microsoft.

OneDrive's storage size is 7 GB. This is not very large by today standards. OneDrive originally was 25 GB. A new user can't get 25 GB free anymore. If you have an old Hotmail account you may have 25 GB.

OneDrive is easy to use. Once installed just copy or move the files you want to backup to the special OneDrive folder. Only files in the OneDrive folder will be stored online. It may be less convenient for you but the advantage of this approach is that you know exactly which files are being stored online.

You also have control over whether files are only stored online rather than on your local Windows device (PC, tablet, phone). Many users use OneDrive to synchronize files between two or more Windows devices. On each individual device you can specify whether a particular folder is stored offline (on the local drive) or online-only on OneDrive. If you store a large folder with several GBs of data on OneDrive then other devices that synchronize with that account will usually have online access so you will have to change it to offline to get a copy of the files.

One of OneDrive's weaknesses is the lack of encryption which means that you should not put files on OneDrive that you don't want other people to ever see. While it is not open to anyone on the Internet who doesn't have the password, law enforcement agencies can obtain copies of your files without your knowledge.

A combination of back-up solutions may be the best strategy. Use OneDrive for your photos and non critical documents like kids homework, your non-financial files, and family pictures. Then use Spideroak or IDrive for your taxes and financial files.

It offers 2GB free storage to start while multiple paid options are also available. Dropbox offers file syncing between the PC / Mac / Linux and the cloud. Load the desktop client or upload through the web interface and begin adding folders to the Dropbox folder. Once in the folder, Dropbox synchs the file between the PC and the cloud and any other devices that you have enabled with Dropbox including mobile and tablets. Quick, light and in the background, Dropbox is a must try and is my preferred Online Backup Solution. One drawback to Dropbox is a folder named "Dropbox" which has to be created, then all the folders and files have to be moved to the "Dropbox" folder.

Like most of the online backup providers, Mozy offers 2 GB for free and the option to add more through paid services. Mozy comes with PC and MAC clients, schedule backups and even file encryption. The encryption capabilities provide some peace of mind to those looking for an Online Backup Solution but concerned about privacy.

This site has been tested for the past month. It meets one of three off-line backup requirements. The storage size is very large at 50 GB. The down side is that it does not sync files. Longevity of the free service needs to be proven.

Other Thoughts

While 2 GB seems to be about the standard when this section first started. Now it is hardly enough. 2GB is roughly equivalent to 250,000 text emails, or 300 songs, or 250 pictures. We all have more the 250 pictures and will run out of space using only a 2 GB of storage.

Since this web site is all about free software, etc., I suggest using two online backup services. Use the sites with pre file transfer encryption for your important documents such as tax returns, then use OneDrive for photos. OneDrive has 7 GB. If you were lucky enough to have had OneDrive before they changed their service, you may have 25 GB of storage.

Besides the storage capacity, the ability to quickly get your data and long term service are other key factors to consider. Some of the above recommendations do not have proven track records but well known companies are likely able to provide long term service for you. Your data should be available and controllable by you. Being able to move your data from one provider to another or even duplicate it amongst providers for redundant backups are also key considerations when choosing a cloud storage solution. The first four suggestions above offer quick accessibility and easy exporting of the data so that you can take to another provider should the need occur.

Finally, regardless of the method or type of backup, whether online, disk to disk, imaging, CD / DVD copying, or floppies (hopefully not!), having a recent backup of your data will ensure that you never have to face that dreaded split second after your data gets ruined.

Dropped From The List

Windows Live Mesh: Microsoft dropped it in favor of OneDrive exclusively.

Bee Cloud is ceasing operation in March 2012.

Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail have been dropped from the list. These are not really back up systems.

CX:, The terms of service has changed, therefore it is no longer free. Existing users can keep their free account with certain condition, but new users have a 15/30 day trials.

NB: Do you have a great free online backup solution? If so, then tell us about it in the comments section.

Quick Selection Guide

IDrive

5

Gizmo's Freeware award as the best product in its class!

Combines a web service with a stand-alone program

Files can be located any place on you computer.
Does have pre/post file transfer encryption.
It has versioning.

This looks pretty good ... standard storage space is 10Gb which can rise to a maximum of 20Gb for free accounts by jumping through the usual hoops (install desktop client, like on FB, recruit other users, etc etc).

I like the site ... for me, general site navigation and media playback are noticeably smoother than they are on Mediafire and DL/UL speeds seem fast.

I wouldn't trust it yet with anything important but for general file sharing etc it certainly looks like a keeper.

I may have missed it but, is there a reason SPEED is not factored in to the equation. I just uploaded a 2+GB file to mediafire and got 2.1-2.6MB/s upload speed which maxed my connection out - D - 25MB/s and
U - 2.5MB/s. It actually surprised me being a free 12GB
storage and an upload size of 20GB per file, with a free account you must log in 1 time per year to keep your files from being deleted.

Thanks for the article and for updating it! (BTW, you should remove Wuala as it's not free anymore).
I just want to *warn* all users about free clouds! Remember, clouds are volatile!
I started using these cloud programs years ago (march 2011 with SugarSync and a bit earlier with DropBox). It was awesome as a new tool. Very handy when you need to sync several PCs (or devices), need to have your data available all the time, and so on. I’ve recommended tens of people (friends and clients) to them spreading the word. Some of my referrals even went commercial.
But humans tend to be greedy. And humans tend to be unethical. I’m not generalizing, it’s a nature fact! I was naïve and thought that any company that offer you something free will maintain the free product. Wrong! Chances are that if you pick a small company, they will stab you in the back in the worst manner and the worst time. SugarSync did that and removed free accounts and instead they moved you to a 90 days trial. They even hid that in the small letters so you mistakenly thought “it’s free”. So I ran away and looked for an alternative: Wuala. I thought "Hey, this is a LaCie company! They’re based on Switzerland! They must be trustworthy”. Wrong again! First they removed the possibility to create NEW free accounts and maintained the existing free ones. So I thought “I was right, this is a good company you can put your files on”. And then, again, removed the EXISTING free accounts, so I have to move again before Dec 31.
Come on guys! Again? Please! Be serious! Don’t offer for free something if you plan to change it! That’s macabre! Let me say two more things from these guys: SugarSync told me in a mail “Making this change is something we’ve planned for a while. It will allow us to serve you better and add services and features that will help SugarSync users get more from the service”. What??? “[…]something we’ve planned for a while”? When? When you started offering “free”? I think that the word isn’t “free” but “demo”, or “test”, or something that denote a time lapse! Another bit: “[…] serve you better […]” you say? I’m a free user and not a client. You won’t “serve” me because I’m not going to stay here! And “Thanks again for your interest and support. We look forward to serving you even better as we take the next step”. They should change that to “Thanks again for making us big. Now GO AWAY you filthy rat! Don’t come any closer to my servers! Go grab some free bytes somewhere else!”
Wuala told me “From the time we created Wuala in 2007, the number of free cloud storage providers has continued to grow. As a result of this evolution and increasing costs, we are today announcing that Wuala will focus on paid accounts and enterprise level storage services to be able to keep our service running”. You are THAT bad at doing math? You didn’t calculate the cost for the free users? Come on! Don’t lie to us! And “Thank you for your understanding and for using Wuala”. I can’t figure this “understanding” word. Is it a mistake? Is it “forgiveness”?
Now, let’s cool down and think two or three seconds, no more, no less. Don’t cheat. I’m going to ask you a question and leave you without answer, so fill the dots.
“How responsible (I will take care of your data in order not to lose it), ethical (I will not change the contract between us in a way it will harm you charging you 10 bucks today and 100 tomorrow when you depend on us) and trustworthy (I will not share your data) is a company that axe the free accounts in this manner?”
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Okay, maybe these are lots of dots and you don’t need that many!
Now the real question. Let’s leave sarcasm and anger here.
What can I do? Big names (Google, MS and if you are gentle, Dropbox) won’t let you sync a folder outside theirs (sure, you can trick them, but maybe next version won’t allow you, like MS did; or maybe you can move all your files to their beloved folder… well, no, maybe that’s not the way things *should* be). Mega… Kim Dotcom you say? Some small company and pray? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
PS: imagine what could happen if Google (or MS, or Yahoo) suddenly ban all free users!
PS2: is there any place to put a complaint?

Which actually predates the more famous dropbox, but isn't as well known because it has always concentrated on corporate customers, not domestic consumers.

I'd never heard of it until I did some work for one of the largest US corporations around. . . and discovered, they used box for cloud storage after an evaluation of its security / date protection.

That was three or four years ago. I signed up for a free home-user account (at that time, 15Gb, though it's less than that now due to demands on its server space)and have been a happy bunny ever since. Box rarely if ever gets a mention in any comparative evaluations so here's the upside and downside of a free account:

For me, that's no problem: I upload folders with personal and financial information in encrypted pdf form as well as batches of digital photographs from the family home album. I *don't* save videos to my Box account because (a)I've no interest in doing so -- my home videos are backed up locally to external drive(s) and (b) Box's 250Mb limit rules out video uploading.

I have never had a single problem with Box over the years and at no time have had any worries about the level of security it affords to its users -- domestic, and big corporates alike. Finally. . .

Anything that keeps me clear of monolithic private data harvesters like Google, Microsoft and Amazon suits me fine. Apart from resenting their ultimately unhealthy dominance, I won't use 'em (nor Dropbox) for the same reason that I've never used Internet Explorer: if someone is going to spend time and effort trying to burglarise something, they'll direct their criminal efforts to stuff which has the potential to yield the most treasure (data)because it is numerically the most popular in usage.

The box.com website is very informative and also explains its synching facility. (Disclaimer: I don't have the slightest connection with box other than as a satisfied free user.)

The purpose of my comment is to possibly save someone making the same mistakes I did. If I had done the maths in the first place, I would have saved myself all the shopping around just by testing upload speeds on my data connection first.
I am a home user, and was looking for free cloud back up with a generous quota to sync my 100Gb music collection to (I only use lossless formats, and files are huge). I have an ADSL 2+ internet service with reasonable speed. After trying out several, and even being gifted 300Gb by one company, and being given permission to open 2 free accounts by another, I realised, belatedly, and after a few trial runs, that uploading it all would take many days non-stop, and in the case of the 300Gb gift, 100Gb would take a couple of weeks at the rate that application ran on my computer. Syncing after that would be painfully slow due to the size of the files. I was using the option to use full bandwidth.
I was wanting to avoid using an external drive, but have given up and started looking into free Synch tools to use with one.
A note about a mistake that can be made with Mega...I tried out both Megasync, and iDrivesync, to sync between devices, and these were both fast and efficient, and I was able to see files on other devices very quickly,with smaller, normal sized files. I made a mistake in Mega, and deleted files on my phone app, and these were all simultaneously deleted in the source folder on my computer too! And the instructions on Mega's help page for how to recover accidentally deleted files didn't work.Thankfully,I had other back up on a hard drive.
.

I suggest checking out Onedrive. They have a new promotion where you can increase your storage to 100 GB. Normally I do not like promotions because you have to recommend your friends and family. This one is different. It still has the recommend to friends feature but you can build up reward points by using the Bing search.

To get additional 100 GB you need 100 reward points. By signing up, Microsoft give you 20 points. Then you can obtain up to 15 point per day by using Bing.

I am not sure you want to keep your tax return on Bing, but it would be great for backing up family photos.

Good info kyengineer.
This offer for 100 GB of OneDrive storage maybe be available in US only according to this article. The storage is for one year and after which any unused storage will vanish but existing files won't be deleted, as noted from this article.

I am doing an article for school about online storage...we have to choose one free and one paid and discuss the features and differences of each. I was researching Spideroak. I was surprised how you discussed that it only offers 2 GB of free space so if someone wants to securely store more than 2 GB the service isn't for them, but that you are using it because you were able to increase your storage by entering several limited time promotions. Why didn't you mention the refer-a-friend program? Spideroak has a refer-a-friend program so the free account gives you 2 GB of storage, but for each friend you refer you and that friend get 1 GB of storage and you can get up to 10 GB free through the refer-a-friend program. So that means you can get up to 12 GB of storage.

This article seems heavily outdated, so I wanted to bring light to some other free online backup services.

First, there is Mega. As in the Megaupload guys. Mega allows for a whopping 50gb of cloud storage space. There is end-to-end encryption, and if you lose your password, it's lost forever. Very secure. See what you guys think. https://mega.co.nz

There is also Mediafire, which has been around for quite a few years now. You can get 10gb, and there is also a desktop app which makes the whole process more convenient. They also have mobile apps, so you can connect with multiple devices.www.mediafire.com

Then there is Surdoc, which offers 100gb of cloud storage space. Wow. They also have mobile apps, and encrypt the files, although I'm not sure of the specifics with that.https://www.surdoc.com

Shared.com offers 100gb as well, and also claims to provide some type of security with your files.https://shared.com/

And lastly, Copy.com offers 15gb of cloud storage space. They offer shareable storage space between different users and everything is syncable. They use Barracuda's cloud storage servers, which may provide extra security.https://www1.copy.com

I hope this helps with updating the article. I would be very curious to know if the ones who offer more would come out ahead, or if the ones who offer less can compenstate for a lack of space with a competent user experience.

As the former editor, a count of free online backup sites was well over 30. It's great to list new services, but before I would recommend them, I tested the service in a virtual machine. I ran into a few services that did not work well.

If you have used any of there services perhaps you could write a review that can be incorporated into this site.

I would recommend checking Box.com
They have 10GB free storage space, apps for all mobile platforms, support symlinks to be able to sync any folder from your PC and with the (Android) mobile app you can easily choose which files or folders to sync for offline use.
After SugarSync is not free anymore, Box is my choice no.1

Boxcryptor is free for basic, non-commercial use (encrypts the file but not the file name at that level). The only gotcha I ran into after install is it requires .NET4, something I've tried to avoid adding.

(and you REALLY have to safely store your password - it is not recoverable)

That's worth knowing, cheers. I've had a Sugarsync account for a couple of years but stopped using it in favour of Dropbox and Googledrive. I'll close the Sugarsync one then , if they're no longer freebies.

Re- Comodo. I did give theirs a spin ... if you install cDrive it creates a virtual drive in My Computer and does indeed sync on-line without using any local hard drive space. Pretty handy to know but not something I think I'll personally find much use for.

Thanks for that link, I tried Comodo's on-line storage ages ago and it was excrutiatingly slow. I just had a look at the site a minute ago though and it all looks very different so I'll give it another try.

I'm especially intrigued by the choice of software download ... cCloud looks like the usual HDD folder that syncs with your on-line storage but there's also cDrive which "offers the posibility (sic) to access your cCloud storage directly, with any program, without consuming any local disk space." Interesting.